Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are?
I have seen a lot of countries offer "entrepreneur" visas. And all of them are highly unrealistic and out of touch with reality. Standard requirements are masters, sometimes phd, have 500K euro funding and the like, able to employ 5 people within a year (!) and so on.
Policy makes clearly don't understand what makes startups work. I think people should be allowed into a country as long as can show proof of funds, a business plan (more like a statement of intent) and the progress can be revisited every year for visa renewal. Anything else is absurd.
there is a need to form a committee of such policy makers who can understand the startup culture, have funded startups in the past, or preferably have started startups themselves. Then only can they understand the kind of policy reforms we need to make it easy for foreign nationals to come US and start a start-up.
The standard argument against immigration is that it "takes jobs away" from local applicants. A successful business will typically generate new jobs. Thus, allowing in people who create jobs over those that take them is seen as a net positive.
If I were to start Chris's Italian American bakery I'm likely taking some business away from Patel's Pure Ghee Sweets and possibly reducing the number of jobs he creates. So while I've generated 5 gross jobs, it's unclear that I generated any net jobs.
(For the record I think "new jobs" is a moronic reason to do anything. A job is a cost, delicious rainbow cookies are the benefit.)
This is true to the extent that different goods are economic substitutes for each other. But even if they are perfect substitutes and no net jobs are created, increased competition would reduce prices for consumers, resulting in a net aggregate economic benefit.
I also think 'jobs' is a moronic reason to do things but immigration policy, more than most, is the focus of atavistic political passions rather than rational economic analysis.
There doesn't need to be any argument against immigration. Since immigration is something the state actively does and permits, immigration policies require active justification in terms of how they benefit the country.
Interesting point! Let's say you start a company that creates 5 jobs, you are classified as an entrepreneur. But let's say you invent/propose something as part of a bigger company or university, and that generates 5 new jobs, it would be unfair to call one an entrepreneur and not the other.
> Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are?
The basis of the "reforms"[1] is that the Administration will not enforce certain parts of immigration law. I don't think anyone can truthfully answer your question until the shakes out in court.
1) you really cannot call them reforms since they have no legislative backing to provide a foundation for new rule making or court decisions
This is inaccurate. The administration already has the legal discretion for this action by statute; it's just that up to now it has been employed on a case-by-case basis and basically subject to the whims of individual immigration officers, rather than pursuant to guidance from the Attorney-General.
That's a bit inaccurate. Prosecutors have legal discretion on a case-by-case basis, but a President not enforcing large sections of the law has never been tested. This is going to be complicated and messy. If your belief is the truth, what happens when the next President decides not to enforce the laws they don't like?
Not so. The delegation of discretionary power to the agency (whose head serves at the pleasure of the President) is explicit in the statute. As I pointed out above, the President is not declining to enforce the law, but promulgating standards for how that discretion should be applied. Furthermore, this is not as novel a situation as some commentators claim, because such standards are regularly promulgated in other similar contexts, such as rules not to automatically exclude would-be immigrants who infected with HIV (instituted and terminated by executive fiat) or to grant refugee status to people from conflict/disaster zones, which are similar exercises of discretion. The only 'large' thing here is the number of people who might qualify for residential status under the newly-promulgated criteria for evaluation (eg 5 year continuous presence inside the US plus parental relationship to a US citizen/LPR plus absence of felony convictions).
Here again is the DoJ's legal memorandum on the allowable scope of executive action in this context - you'll notice that it affirms the President's powers to act in some respects while denying it in others. I'd be glad to discuss it in depth but the document is necessarily long and technical.
I've read the finding by the President's appointed people and do not find their argument compelling as many didn't when President Bush's appointees delivered a similar finding on the use of waterboarding.
That's a bullshit argument and you know it. If you have actually read it why don't you point out what part of their argument you consider to be flawed? You started out making a legal claim (that Obama had decided not to enforce parts of the law, and that there was no legislative backing for this decision). Now you're making rhetorical arguments, ie suggesting that appointees will serve up whatever argument the President wants - despite the fact the opinion includes a denial of presidential authority on one issue that was inquired about, and despite my (very briefly) pointing out the legislative basis of executive authority and non-controversial examples of its use on a collective rather than an individual basis.
I'm not expecting a legal brief but you haven't offered anything substantive at all. (Edit for formatting)
Its not a bs argument, as even the document you cited includes: "The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed deferred action program for parents of recipients of deferred action under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would not be a permissible exercise of DHS’s enforcement discretion."
Presidents who try to weasel around the law, particularly when they spent the earlier part of the year telling us it wouldn't be right are out of line.
I already alluded twice to the fact that the document affirms the legality of some proposed action and denies that of others - so it seems you finally took a look at it and found the denial that I already told you about. And guess what, the executive action announced last week does not include the proposal which this memo said would be outside the scope of Presidential authority.
Presidents who try to weasel around the law, particularly when they spent the earlier part of the year telling us it wouldn't be right are out of line.
Except that that hasn't happened here; as far as I can tell changes announced by the President last week are entirely consistent with the law. Let's have another look at the memo, with the sentence you quoted in its context:
(^^ edited to fix a a word mistake - I said proposed instead of announced)
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed policy to prioritize the removal of certain aliens unlawfully present in the United States would be a permissible exercise of DHS’s discretion to enforce the immigration laws.
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed deferred action program for parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents would also be a permissible exercise of DHS’s discretion to enforce the immigration laws.
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed deferred action program for parents of recipients of deferred action under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would not be a permissible exercise of DHS’s enforcement discretion.
So the memo says that 2 proposed changes would be permissible, and one would not. You chose to quote only the last one, and make it look like Obama is riding roughshod over the law - except that his policy as announced only implemented the first two proposals. He said that only parents of US citizen or Legal Permanent Resident children would be able to apply for deferred action - there was no such provision for parents of children who received deferred action (often referred to in the media as 'DREAMers'), and Obama actually received some criticism from immigration activists over that.
You know, if you had simply said you think Obama's action is terrible policy I'd have no problem with that - I wouldn't agree, but it's a totally valid opinion. But instead you went for making claims that the President was acting outside the law, which are simply not supported by the facts, and now you've ended up pulling things out of context in an attempt to shore up your erroneous position, but which in fact undermine it further.
"I already alluded twice to the fact that the document affirms the legality of some proposed action and denies that of others - so it seems you finally took a look at it and found the denial that I already told you about.
No, I read the memo earlier when it was released. I still don't find either part compelling and I see it as more executive power grabbing, but let's look at it in detail since you don't actually point to any arguments beyond the memo, I guess I get to do all the work.
First, this memo is a learned opinion of lawyers who work for the executive branch. This is not an independent finding or court ruling.
The first part of the memo references only one case "See generally Reno v. Am.-Arab Anti-Discrim. Comm., 525 U.S. 471, 483–84 (1999)" which can be found at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo... (the Supreme Court's actual page doesn't go back that far). The ruling for this one was "an alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation". The memo cited section is for the definition of "deferred action". Which is true, it talks at great length about deferred action.
While pointing out later on in the document it points out:
"It is entirely understandable, however, why Congress would want only the discretion-protecting provision of §1252(g) applied even to pending cases: because that provision is specifically directed at the deconstruction, fragmentation, and hence prolongation of removal proceedings."
"This broad discretion [afforded the Executive] rests largely on the recognition that the decision to prosecute is particularly ill-suited to judicial review. Such factors as the strength of the case, the prosecution's general deterrence value, the Government's enforcement priorities, and the case's relationship to the Government's overall enforcement plan are not readily susceptible to the kind of analysis the courts are competent to undertake. Judicial supervision in this area, moreover, entails systemic costs of particular concern. Examining the basis of a prosecution delays the criminal proceeding, threatens to chill law enforcement by subjecting the prosecutor's motives and decision making to outside inquiry, and may undermine prosecutorial effectiveness by revealing the Government's enforcement policy. All of these are substantial concerns that make the courts properly hesitant to examine the decision whether to prosecute."
I find the logic of using discretion that Congress has given the Executive branch in legislation as a way to speed the deportation process now being used to stop a large section of deporations to be counter to what the legislation intended.
While the memo goes on and says the one thing I believe:
"Third, the Executive Branch ordinarily cannot, as the Court put it in Chaney, "‘consciously and expressly adopt[] a general policy’ that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.""
This is the heart of the argument against this delay which is an abdication of its responsibilites. I have seen no argument, including from the memo stating the above line that makes me think this is anything but an abdication because the President couldn't get legislation from the lawfully elected body that is responsible for legislation that is to be faithfully executed by the President.
Beyond all this, I'm a little sick and tired of people cussing and thinking that makes good points. Name calling doesn't encourage anything other than deciding next time not to bother.
I wouldn't have cussed if you had offered an argument like this earlier on instead of advancing obvious fallacies.
To take up some of your points:
"It is entirely understandable, however, why Congress would want only the discretion-protecting provision of §1252(g) applied even to pending cases: because that provision is specifically directed at the deconstruction, fragmentation, and hence prolongation of removal proceedings."
I'd argue in passing that the fragmentation and prolongation discussed there are to safeguard the (highly abbreviated) rights of an immigrant facing removal by providing an avenue of appeal where few other procedural options exist, as opposed to an expedition of removal proceedings.
I find the logic of using discretion that Congress has given the Executive branch in legislation as a way to speed the deportation process now being used to stop a large section of deporations to be counter to what the legislation intended.
It's hard to agree with your claim that discretion exists purely to speed the deportation process when the statute includes many provisions explicitly granting the Attorney-General discretion to do the opposite, eg 8 USC 1229b which lays out a wide variety of reasons that the Attorney-General might opt to cancel ongoing removal proceedings.
In general, relying on claims about legislative intent is the sign of a weak case; just as ambiguity in contracts is traditionally construed against the drafter, courts tend to hold Congress to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, since reasonable people can disagree about the latter. Congress had no difficulty specifying certain classes of aliens ineligible for relief under subsection C of the section above (spies, terrorist, and war criminals being the most obvious undesirables), so we could equally argue that had Congress intended a more exclusionary standard than that implemented by the executive, it could have legislated one, yet it chose not to do so. Indeed the few modifications to IIRIRA since 1994 have mostly broadened rather than narrowed the options for relief notwithstanding the more rigorous proscriptions against terrorism in the post-9/11 environment. During those 20 years (the majority of which featured GOP control of Congress and some of which featured that and GOP control of the White House) the illegal immigrant population swelled significantly but Congress declined to impose stricter rules or appropriate significant extra resources for enforcement, despite the huge reorganization of the government's domestic security apparatus into the DHS. For example Congress has chosen not to appropriate funds to clear the immigration court backlog, or to modernize the visa overstay database system, or to mandate the use of e-verify by employers (to name but three common complaints from champions of more rigorous enforcement).
This is the heart of the argument against this delay which is an abdication of its responsibilites. I have seen no argument, including from the memo stating the above line that makes me think this is anything but an abdication because the President couldn't get legislation from the lawfully elected body that is responsible for legislation that is to be faithfully executed by the President.
But as I've pointed out (and you have not disputed), The Executive branch is well within its rights to grant blanket stays of removal in response to things like natural disaster or war in foreign countries, and nobody outside of an ideological fringe complains that these are an abdication of responsibility. You might as easily argue that Obama's warning that anyone with a felony conviction will be deported amounts to a abridgement of the due process that Congress provided for - having a felony conviction already makes deportation more likely, but avenues for appeal do exist. It's easy to think of situations where rigid application of this felony-deportation standard will result in miscarriages of justice, as would the 5-year ...
> I wouldn't have cussed if you had offered an argument like this earlier on instead of advancing obvious fallacies.
So, if you don't like people's answers you feel you are entitled to cuss? Given how you seem to not actually look at the quote which is from the Supreme Court and explains the limits and intent of the ruling, I don't see any profit in keeping this going.
Of course I do - I don't need permission to express myself bluntly if I see fit, and I dislike having my intelligence insulted. I certainly looked at the Supreme Court's quote but don't think it supports your position especially well; by definition, prosecutors are in a position to assess the effectiveness of their own policy, unless you intend to argue that executive guidance on the implementation of executive discretion is sufficiently similar to judicial review that the Executive branch should refrain from issuing any.
I don't see any profit in keeping this going either, though.
> That's a bit inaccurate. Prosecutors have legal discretion on a case-by-case basis, but a President not enforcing large sections of the law has never been tested...what happens when the next President decides not to enforce the laws they don't like?
That's a bit inaccurate as well. Reagan and his administration were fairly open that they were not going to enforce sections of law as well, and in the same area, labor law. Particularly with directives sent to the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Just because Reagan did it does not make it right. The executive is supposed to execute the law, not pick and chose what laws to follow. If a President doesn't like the law then lobby for new one. If the voters don't give you the votes then you suck it up and execute as written.
> Can someone help me understand what the new reforms are?
They are a lot less attractive, the more you read the details. While they're certainly an improvement, for the most part they are temporary in nature, and don't address the fundamental problems with immigration in the US. Which, TBH, needs to originate in the legislative branch.
- Expands those eligible for the existing DACA program, for children under 16 that came here before 2010. Extends the period from 2 to 3 years.
- Allows parents of legal immigrants to request deferment for 3 years.
- Provisional waivers for sons & daughters of citizens and lawful residents are expanded
- Lets applicants for naturalization use their credit cards to pay their fees
Did you even look at your link? Looking at [1] only two H1B employees received a wage offer of less than 103k, and in 2013 only one (Database administrator) received under 100k. In every single case the prevailing wage on the application was lower than the wage offer.
In this world, where San Francisco is but a tiny city in a country of more than 300 million people and job offers are 30-50% above national prevailing wage.
> job offers are 30-50% above national prevailing wage.
Making $70k in some midwestern city will get you a better house, better access to education for your children, and generally better quality of life than what $200k will get you in the Valley. I know people who've lived in both worlds tell me exactly this.
So, having offers at 30-50% is not a good thing, it's a bad thing. It should be much higher than that.
What does the "national prevailing wage" have to do with the "prevailing wage for a software developer in SF", which is what I was talking about? San Francisco is a tiny city, and I am only talking about San Francisco since that is where the job I linked to is located.
Every time this issue is brought up on HN there's a ton of people hijacking the conversation with talk about tech-worker shortage [1,2]. You even fail to note that two of the people- Dutch and Swiss, mentioned in the article aren't even 'tech' folks.
This is an important moral issue even if you disregard the STEM-worker shortage. There are plenty of foreign nationals working in the US, who are here because of specific skills that are important for their company. These folks do not all belong to the nebulous pool of 'STEM-shortage'-fillers.
I have friends who were PhDs in very specific fields with very specific talents who have had to go back because of losing out in the H1B lottery (O1 visa/EB1 is often too arbitrary or restrictive to be a reliable option). Another example on HN is the top rated comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160860
Top 10 H1-B's are being sucked up by Indian Outsourcing companies with low wage scales
So when we hear isolated cases like the article or your friend example, that's fine, but for the rest of us working schlubs, we can't forget the table above when considering the cases that H1-B is suppose to address.
If these jobs are paying the $60-70K Range, to me there is no reason why a College Graduate from an American Computer Science or Information Systems cannot perform these jobs.
IMO, end clients such as Fortune 500 are simply using the Cognizant's, Infosys etc. of the world, as a "Flexible Workforce" or "Onshoring Model" in lieu of actually hiring and training employees.
In my view, they should allow these otherwise H1-B's access to a visa that isn't tied to an employer, so they can seek competitive wages and allow them to compete openly without the prospect them being deported be a drag on their salary, or cut down the H1-B's entirely. Either way, I believe is difficult for Americans to compete.
We can talk special privileges for "startups" but as long as it takes $500 on incorporate.com to create a company, the system will be abused.
I did read it, and I thought it doesn't even deserve to be called journalism. They only reference people currently going through the immigration process, and employers. What do you think their perspective is going to be? They even included a quote from an employer claiming that he hires 10 Americans for every immigrant, without any quantification, clarification or investigation, let alone analysis on whether or not that is common for technology firms (it isn't). For all we know, all 10 hired people don't make a combined salary of the single imported worker. They then left an unsourced quote as the very last line of the article claiming that the new measure would not in any way be related to wage suppression.
When I worked for actual worker's rights, in another lifetime, whenever a PR firm hired out journalists to write a hit piece on our organization they would write articles of this quality. Selectively choosing interviewees to meet a predefined viewpoint, skipping over flashpoint words, presenting only one viewpoint without analysis, and then as a buried lead, dismiss potential opposition worries as far below the fold as possible.
Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years.
The H1-B quota empties out. Domestic tech folks aren't being undercut by Asian serfs. Companies get the tech workers they need.
Of course, the tech companies don't want this. There is no tech worker shortage; there is a cheap tech worker shortage. Granting green cards would make tech workers more expensive.
Is there a good reason to believe this would happen? It seems possible that the new green card holders would just find themselves in the same situation as native workers. How many hundreds of thousands of IT degrees are awarded every year in India?
The outsourcing companies (Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant etc) would have to be banned from getting H1-Bs as well for this to happen. American companies usually hire Indians who are here for a Masters in CS degree and there aren't that many of them.
Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years.
There is no INS; that government agency eventually became USCIS, part of the DHS. And this isn't a matter of changing things by administrative fiat; Congress would have to pass a law to this effect. The President's executive action last week leverages discretionary powers that are already written into the law (despite what political opponents claim about it being unconstitutional) but which apply only to specific fact patterns (which is why the action is limited to parents of US citizen/LPR children).
> "Mr. Srini said the American visa restrictions had also crimped his ability to hire talented engineers. Because the primary visas used to hire software workers, known as H-1B visas, run out in a few days when the lottery is opened every April, he really has one chance a year to hire foreigners. And if they don’t win the lottery, they have to wait another year, often forcing Zenefits to find someone else."
I don't disagree with the article in regards to easing the ability for entrepreneurs to come to the States and open a business but it has been proven time and again that most of the "we lack talented engineers, we need more H1-B's" is in fact "we don't want to pay the going rate in the States, we need more H1-B's"
Some of them should be getting $20000/mo, since they're doing work that really full employees are expected to do. But that aside, you're totally misrepresenting the situation here - $9000/mo is not the pay for an average intern.
Consider the controversy only a few months back about interns working for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg not getting paid at all.
This part of the article really stuck out to me too. Are we supposed to feel bad for Zenefits here? If Zenefits is able to find someone else, then they didn't need the H1B to begin with...
Not that it matters in the grand scheme, but I'm willing to write off Zenefits as a potential employer if this is the attitude of the founders.
I think there is something weird going on. At least for tech, I think there's a mentality that our hiring pool isn't just "people who show up at our office with a resume" or even "people in the same country" but "the entire goddamn world".
I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think it's definitely different from the way things used to be, and probably different from the way things still are in a lot of industries. So it seems reasonable to say that the current US immigration policies were not written with the whole-world hiring pool mentality in mind.
>Right now, the law is so Kafkaesque that Mr. Srini, who is from India, had to get his American co-founder, Parker Conrad, to officially hire him as Zenefits’ database administrator simply to transfer his visa from his previous employer so they could create the company
If it is so easy, imagine all the intelliteks, computeks, etc abusing this to suppress wages.
H1B visas are an excuse to pay less for high tech workers IMO. That is what I've always seen as American workers aren't chosen for those jobs because they can make more money else where. Why isn't this more well known?
Simple answer: because it's not politically correct to ask about it. Merely questioning anything anything benefiting immigrants and you're instantly labeled an ignorant xenophobic backwoods dweller. Who cares about finding jobs for Americans? Companies wants the cheapest and most expendable resources they can find. Zuckerberg doesn't give a shit about immigration reform, it just so happens that pushing for it aligns with reducing Facebook's human capital costs.
The US currently takes about 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year, and of course Facebook is more than welcome to hire these new citizens, just as it would hire any UC citizen regardless or immigration status or national origin.
I'm not really surprised Facebook wants to change the composition of immigrants coming to the US. Except for some very narrow programs, immigrants to the US aren't really chosen based on skills and education. So Facebook would much rather support a program where they get to decide who does and does not get to live and work in the US, screening for the kind of worker they'd like to employ. There is also the appeal of an indentured worker, as many people have pointed out. You don't have to be especially cynical to think this is a huge selling point to the corporations that rely heavily on the H1B visa. What would Facebook rather have - a free citizen immigrant who wasn't selected for any particular interest or ability in programming, or an immigrant who is granted the right to live and work in the US provided he or she lives where Facebook says he or she should live?
For me, my misgivings come from two main sources. First, I am solidly opposed to corporate control over the immigration system. I don't like the idea of Facebook's HR department deciding who will and who won't become a US citizen, green card holder, or resident. Second, while I certainly think programmers are valuable workers (some of them, anyway), I don't think that there's sufficient evidence of a shortage relative to other knowledge based fields. Out here in SF, software developers earn (at the median) a bit more than dental hygienists, a bit less than registered nurses. I'm not complaining about that, it's fine by me that nurses are paid better than programmers. I just think it suggests that there's really no critical shortage or programmers that the government needs to get involved in resolving by tinkering with the kind of immigrants who get to come to the US.
I would be ok with a skilled immigration points system like Australia has, and sure, programming counts as a skill, though I wouldn't put any unusual emphasis on programming vs plumbing, nursing, dental hygiene, or any number of other jobs requiring specialized skills and training.
These centers are developed by capital willing to invest in risky technology start ups. That is the first-step oxygen that is required to have a SV-style tech hub. You can import the talent in afterwards.
I left Canada because it's mostly resource wealth that makes the money there. There isn't nearly as much capital available for software in Canada as SF. SF has more $30mm+ net worth families/individuals than all of Canada combined. And a 1/3rd of those Canadian families made money from resources.
This is an important topic, and the NYTimes should be ashamed of this "journalism". The article is called Workers in Silicon Valley, but it only mentions quotes from Employers and people currently going through the immigration process. I wonder what their perspective is going to be?
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadI have seen a lot of countries offer "entrepreneur" visas. And all of them are highly unrealistic and out of touch with reality. Standard requirements are masters, sometimes phd, have 500K euro funding and the like, able to employ 5 people within a year (!) and so on.
Policy makes clearly don't understand what makes startups work. I think people should be allowed into a country as long as can show proof of funds, a business plan (more like a statement of intent) and the progress can be revisited every year for visa renewal. Anything else is absurd.
E.g. Canada, UK, Ireland, Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Italy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_Visa#mediaviewer/File:C...
(For the record I think "new jobs" is a moronic reason to do anything. A job is a cost, delicious rainbow cookies are the benefit.)
I also think 'jobs' is a moronic reason to do things but immigration policy, more than most, is the focus of atavistic political passions rather than rational economic analysis.
The basis of the "reforms"[1] is that the Administration will not enforce certain parts of immigration law. I don't think anyone can truthfully answer your question until the shakes out in court.
1) you really cannot call them reforms since they have no legislative backing to provide a foundation for new rule making or court decisions
Here again is the DoJ's legal memorandum on the allowable scope of executive action in this context - you'll notice that it affirms the President's powers to act in some respects while denying it in others. I'd be glad to discuss it in depth but the document is necessarily long and technical.
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta...
I'm not expecting a legal brief but you haven't offered anything substantive at all. (Edit for formatting)
Presidents who try to weasel around the law, particularly when they spent the earlier part of the year telling us it wouldn't be right are out of line.
Presidents who try to weasel around the law, particularly when they spent the earlier part of the year telling us it wouldn't be right are out of line.
Except that that hasn't happened here; as far as I can tell changes announced by the President last week are entirely consistent with the law. Let's have another look at the memo, with the sentence you quoted in its context:
(^^ edited to fix a a word mistake - I said proposed instead of announced)
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed policy to prioritize the removal of certain aliens unlawfully present in the United States would be a permissible exercise of DHS’s discretion to enforce the immigration laws.
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed deferred action program for parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents would also be a permissible exercise of DHS’s discretion to enforce the immigration laws.
The Department of Homeland Security’s proposed deferred action program for parents of recipients of deferred action under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would not be a permissible exercise of DHS’s enforcement discretion.
(From http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta... emphasis added by me)
So the memo says that 2 proposed changes would be permissible, and one would not. You chose to quote only the last one, and make it look like Obama is riding roughshod over the law - except that his policy as announced only implemented the first two proposals. He said that only parents of US citizen or Legal Permanent Resident children would be able to apply for deferred action - there was no such provision for parents of children who received deferred action (often referred to in the media as 'DREAMers'), and Obama actually received some criticism from immigration activists over that.
You know, if you had simply said you think Obama's action is terrible policy I'd have no problem with that - I wouldn't agree, but it's a totally valid opinion. But instead you went for making claims that the President was acting outside the law, which are simply not supported by the facts, and now you've ended up pulling things out of context in an attempt to shore up your erroneous position, but which in fact undermine it further.
So yes, I still say your argument is bullshit.
No, I read the memo earlier when it was released. I still don't find either part compelling and I see it as more executive power grabbing, but let's look at it in detail since you don't actually point to any arguments beyond the memo, I guess I get to do all the work.
First, this memo is a learned opinion of lawyers who work for the executive branch. This is not an independent finding or court ruling.
The first part of the memo references only one case "See generally Reno v. Am.-Arab Anti-Discrim. Comm., 525 U.S. 471, 483–84 (1999)" which can be found at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vo... (the Supreme Court's actual page doesn't go back that far). The ruling for this one was "an alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation". The memo cited section is for the definition of "deferred action". Which is true, it talks at great length about deferred action.
While pointing out later on in the document it points out:
"It is entirely understandable, however, why Congress would want only the discretion-protecting provision of §1252(g) applied even to pending cases: because that provision is specifically directed at the deconstruction, fragmentation, and hence prolongation of removal proceedings."
"This broad discretion [afforded the Executive] rests largely on the recognition that the decision to prosecute is particularly ill-suited to judicial review. Such factors as the strength of the case, the prosecution's general deterrence value, the Government's enforcement priorities, and the case's relationship to the Government's overall enforcement plan are not readily susceptible to the kind of analysis the courts are competent to undertake. Judicial supervision in this area, moreover, entails systemic costs of particular concern. Examining the basis of a prosecution delays the criminal proceeding, threatens to chill law enforcement by subjecting the prosecutor's motives and decision making to outside inquiry, and may undermine prosecutorial effectiveness by revealing the Government's enforcement policy. All of these are substantial concerns that make the courts properly hesitant to examine the decision whether to prosecute."
I find the logic of using discretion that Congress has given the Executive branch in legislation as a way to speed the deportation process now being used to stop a large section of deporations to be counter to what the legislation intended.
While the memo goes on and says the one thing I believe:
"Third, the Executive Branch ordinarily cannot, as the Court put it in Chaney, "‘consciously and expressly adopt[] a general policy’ that is so extreme as to amount to an abdication of its statutory responsibilities.""
This is the heart of the argument against this delay which is an abdication of its responsibilites. I have seen no argument, including from the memo stating the above line that makes me think this is anything but an abdication because the President couldn't get legislation from the lawfully elected body that is responsible for legislation that is to be faithfully executed by the President.
Beyond all this, I'm a little sick and tired of people cussing and thinking that makes good points. Name calling doesn't encourage anything other than deciding next time not to bother.
To take up some of your points:
"It is entirely understandable, however, why Congress would want only the discretion-protecting provision of §1252(g) applied even to pending cases: because that provision is specifically directed at the deconstruction, fragmentation, and hence prolongation of removal proceedings."
I'd argue in passing that the fragmentation and prolongation discussed there are to safeguard the (highly abbreviated) rights of an immigrant facing removal by providing an avenue of appeal where few other procedural options exist, as opposed to an expedition of removal proceedings.
I find the logic of using discretion that Congress has given the Executive branch in legislation as a way to speed the deportation process now being used to stop a large section of deporations to be counter to what the legislation intended.
It's hard to agree with your claim that discretion exists purely to speed the deportation process when the statute includes many provisions explicitly granting the Attorney-General discretion to do the opposite, eg 8 USC 1229b which lays out a wide variety of reasons that the Attorney-General might opt to cancel ongoing removal proceedings.
In general, relying on claims about legislative intent is the sign of a weak case; just as ambiguity in contracts is traditionally construed against the drafter, courts tend to hold Congress to the letter rather than the spirit of the law, since reasonable people can disagree about the latter. Congress had no difficulty specifying certain classes of aliens ineligible for relief under subsection C of the section above (spies, terrorist, and war criminals being the most obvious undesirables), so we could equally argue that had Congress intended a more exclusionary standard than that implemented by the executive, it could have legislated one, yet it chose not to do so. Indeed the few modifications to IIRIRA since 1994 have mostly broadened rather than narrowed the options for relief notwithstanding the more rigorous proscriptions against terrorism in the post-9/11 environment. During those 20 years (the majority of which featured GOP control of Congress and some of which featured that and GOP control of the White House) the illegal immigrant population swelled significantly but Congress declined to impose stricter rules or appropriate significant extra resources for enforcement, despite the huge reorganization of the government's domestic security apparatus into the DHS. For example Congress has chosen not to appropriate funds to clear the immigration court backlog, or to modernize the visa overstay database system, or to mandate the use of e-verify by employers (to name but three common complaints from champions of more rigorous enforcement).
This is the heart of the argument against this delay which is an abdication of its responsibilites. I have seen no argument, including from the memo stating the above line that makes me think this is anything but an abdication because the President couldn't get legislation from the lawfully elected body that is responsible for legislation that is to be faithfully executed by the President.
But as I've pointed out (and you have not disputed), The Executive branch is well within its rights to grant blanket stays of removal in response to things like natural disaster or war in foreign countries, and nobody outside of an ideological fringe complains that these are an abdication of responsibility. You might as easily argue that Obama's warning that anyone with a felony conviction will be deported amounts to a abridgement of the due process that Congress provided for - having a felony conviction already makes deportation more likely, but avenues for appeal do exist. It's easy to think of situations where rigid application of this felony-deportation standard will result in miscarriages of justice, as would the 5-year ...
So, if you don't like people's answers you feel you are entitled to cuss? Given how you seem to not actually look at the quote which is from the Supreme Court and explains the limits and intent of the ruling, I don't see any profit in keeping this going.
I don't see any profit in keeping this going either, though.
That's a bit inaccurate as well. Reagan and his administration were fairly open that they were not going to enforce sections of law as well, and in the same area, labor law. Particularly with directives sent to the Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/09/opinion/looking-for-loopho...
The idea that Reagan was enforcing OSHA labor laws, but that Obama is not enforcing immigration labor laws, is a bit hard to swallow.
They are a lot less attractive, the more you read the details. While they're certainly an improvement, for the most part they are temporary in nature, and don't address the fundamental problems with immigration in the US. Which, TBH, needs to originate in the legislative branch.
- Expands those eligible for the existing DACA program, for children under 16 that came here before 2010. Extends the period from 2 to 3 years.
- Allows parents of legal immigrants to request deferment for 3 years.
- Provisional waivers for sons & daughters of citizens and lawful residents are expanded
- Lets applicants for naturalization use their credit cards to pay their fees
http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction
Did you even look at your link? Looking at [1] only two H1B employees received a wage offer of less than 103k, and in 2013 only one (Database administrator) received under 100k. In every single case the prevailing wage on the application was lower than the wage offer.
[1] http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-by-companies-2014-yourpeople#.VH...
http://visadoor.com/h1bvisa-2014-I-200-14065-134617/software...
Making $70k in some midwestern city will get you a better house, better access to education for your children, and generally better quality of life than what $200k will get you in the Valley. I know people who've lived in both worlds tell me exactly this.
So, having offers at 30-50% is not a good thing, it's a bad thing. It should be much higher than that.
This is an important moral issue even if you disregard the STEM-worker shortage. There are plenty of foreign nationals working in the US, who are here because of specific skills that are important for their company. These folks do not all belong to the nebulous pool of 'STEM-shortage'-fillers.
I have friends who were PhDs in very specific fields with very specific talents who have had to go back because of losing out in the H1B lottery (O1 visa/EB1 is often too arbitrary or restrictive to be a reliable option). Another example on HN is the top rated comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160860
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8637756 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372574
http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
Top 10 H1-B's are being sucked up by Indian Outsourcing companies with low wage scales
So when we hear isolated cases like the article or your friend example, that's fine, but for the rest of us working schlubs, we can't forget the table above when considering the cases that H1-B is suppose to address.
http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
If these jobs are paying the $60-70K Range, to me there is no reason why a College Graduate from an American Computer Science or Information Systems cannot perform these jobs.
IMO, end clients such as Fortune 500 are simply using the Cognizant's, Infosys etc. of the world, as a "Flexible Workforce" or "Onshoring Model" in lieu of actually hiring and training employees.
In my view, they should allow these otherwise H1-B's access to a visa that isn't tied to an employer, so they can seek competitive wages and allow them to compete openly without the prospect them being deported be a drag on their salary, or cut down the H1-B's entirely. Either way, I believe is difficult for Americans to compete.
We can talk special privileges for "startups" but as long as it takes $500 on incorporate.com to create a company, the system will be abused.
When I worked for actual worker's rights, in another lifetime, whenever a PR firm hired out journalists to write a hit piece on our organization they would write articles of this quality. Selectively choosing interviewees to meet a predefined viewpoint, skipping over flashpoint words, presenting only one viewpoint without analysis, and then as a buried lead, dismiss potential opposition worries as far below the fold as possible.
The article stated the source of that quote:
"Carl Guardino, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents most of the region’s large tech companies"
Look, the problem is easy to solve. Tell INS that a tech H1-B converts to a green card in a year and make it stick. No waiting 6+ years.
The H1-B quota empties out. Domestic tech folks aren't being undercut by Asian serfs. Companies get the tech workers they need.
Of course, the tech companies don't want this. There is no tech worker shortage; there is a cheap tech worker shortage. Granting green cards would make tech workers more expensive.
Is there a good reason to believe this would happen? It seems possible that the new green card holders would just find themselves in the same situation as native workers. How many hundreds of thousands of IT degrees are awarded every year in India?
There is no INS; that government agency eventually became USCIS, part of the DHS. And this isn't a matter of changing things by administrative fiat; Congress would have to pass a law to this effect. The President's executive action last week leverages discretionary powers that are already written into the law (despite what political opponents claim about it being unconstitutional) but which apply only to specific fact patterns (which is why the action is limited to parents of US citizen/LPR children).
Here's the legal explanation if you're interested, but it probably won't make any sense unless you're already familiar with title 8: http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/atta...
I don't disagree with the article in regards to easing the ability for entrepreneurs to come to the States and open a business but it has been proven time and again that most of the "we lack talented engineers, we need more H1-B's" is in fact "we don't want to pay the going rate in the States, we need more H1-B's"
Consider the controversy only a few months back about interns working for Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg not getting paid at all.
Not that it matters in the grand scheme, but I'm willing to write off Zenefits as a potential employer if this is the attitude of the founders.
I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think it's definitely different from the way things used to be, and probably different from the way things still are in a lot of industries. So it seems reasonable to say that the current US immigration policies were not written with the whole-world hiring pool mentality in mind.
If it is so easy, imagine all the intelliteks, computeks, etc abusing this to suppress wages.
Money rules all.
I'm not really surprised Facebook wants to change the composition of immigrants coming to the US. Except for some very narrow programs, immigrants to the US aren't really chosen based on skills and education. So Facebook would much rather support a program where they get to decide who does and does not get to live and work in the US, screening for the kind of worker they'd like to employ. There is also the appeal of an indentured worker, as many people have pointed out. You don't have to be especially cynical to think this is a huge selling point to the corporations that rely heavily on the H1B visa. What would Facebook rather have - a free citizen immigrant who wasn't selected for any particular interest or ability in programming, or an immigrant who is granted the right to live and work in the US provided he or she lives where Facebook says he or she should live?
For me, my misgivings come from two main sources. First, I am solidly opposed to corporate control over the immigration system. I don't like the idea of Facebook's HR department deciding who will and who won't become a US citizen, green card holder, or resident. Second, while I certainly think programmers are valuable workers (some of them, anyway), I don't think that there's sufficient evidence of a shortage relative to other knowledge based fields. Out here in SF, software developers earn (at the median) a bit more than dental hygienists, a bit less than registered nurses. I'm not complaining about that, it's fine by me that nurses are paid better than programmers. I just think it suggests that there's really no critical shortage or programmers that the government needs to get involved in resolving by tinkering with the kind of immigrants who get to come to the US.
I would be ok with a skilled immigration points system like Australia has, and sure, programming counts as a skill, though I wouldn't put any unusual emphasis on programming vs plumbing, nursing, dental hygiene, or any number of other jobs requiring specialized skills and training.
Unfortunately, while finance centers are aplenty, tech centers are much more sparse.
I left Canada because it's mostly resource wealth that makes the money there. There isn't nearly as much capital available for software in Canada as SF. SF has more $30mm+ net worth families/individuals than all of Canada combined. And a 1/3rd of those Canadian families made money from resources.
I mean every day you match X visas to the highest salaries!
So salaries doesn't go down, and people can apply all year.
And you check the salary is really paid.